Chapter 403: Chapter 403

The ground gave a faint tremble.

The horde was coming.

At least a few hundred zombies, by the feel of it.

Though our comms were sealed, it was clear from the atmosphere outside that something serious was happening.

The distant sound of the armored vehicle’s machine gun echoed toward us.

Judging by the rhythm of the gunfire, a significant number had swarmed the vehicle.

I checked the time and pulled out a flare.

The flare whistled sharply through the air, rising high before igniting and casting a green glow across the corner of the night sky.

The signal to continue the mission.

“What about using the comms?” Cheon Young-jae asked.

“No. Keep the comms sealed until the end.”

“But still, we need clear communication—”

As Cheon Young-jae tried to speak, Kim Daram placed a hand on his shoulder and shook her head.

“Listen to him. If there’s one thing he’s got a sixth sense for, it’s monsters.”

It’d been a while since I’d heard someone say that.

It was true—I’d always been oddly adept at predicting new monsters’ capabilities, attack patterns, strengths, and weaknesses before anyone else.

People often asked me how I did it.

I couldn’t explain it myself.

If I had to pick something—maybe imagination?

Monsters were creatures founded on logic completely alien to humanity, so facing them left room for imagination to thrive.

“No booby traps, right?”

I glanced at the stairway descending below.

Kim Daram stared silently at Ahn Seung-hwan.

He snapped out of his daze and answered quickly.

“No. There shouldn’t be any.”

He added, “We were told in training there wouldn’t be.”

A pack of zombies approached.

I sent Ahn Seung-hwan and Kim Daram down first and stayed at the rear with Cheon Young-jae.

Moments later, a horde passed by just ahead of us, slipping by without noticing us, charging toward the armored vehicle instead.

The gunfire answered soon after.

The vehicle could hold its own, but the ammo wouldn’t last forever.

We quickly moved down the stairs.

Nothing unusual about the stairwell. Just a typical setup for a no-basement commercial building packed with utility systems.

At the bottom, standing before a steel door labeled Mechanical Room, were Kim Daram and Ahn Seung-hwan.

A sign on the door warned: Authorized Personnel Only.

Ahn Seung-hwan knocked.

“This is Ahn Seung-hwan. We’re here with Commander Park Gyu for rescue.”

After a moment, a voice answered from behind the door.

It was Lee Haru’s voice.

Exhausted and shaking, but otherwise unharmed.

The door opened soon after.

She saw us, and despite the exhaustion in her eyes, a flood of relief softened her face as she ushered us inside.

The inside looked like a standard mechanical room—until we reached a locker tucked away in the corner.

Behind the locker was a hidden passage.

Passing through it revealed a well-constructed underground bunker.

Not the luxurious, spacious kind you’d expect from the term Presidential Shelter—but a standard, no-frills government bunker.

Familiar faces were there.

Shim Hyeong-do and two other members of the hunter team had survived.

But one of them was badly wounded.

A glance told me the injuries were fatal.

In the past, we wouldn’t have hesitated to leave someone like that behind.

Shim Hyeong-do lacked that cold detachment.

He hadn’t hardened his heart into steel like we had.

“There was a sniper. Probably a fanatic. He watched us from the dark for hours... then fired the second Hyun-taek stepped out of the barrier’s range.”

The bullet had torn through his abdomen.

Miraculously, it hadn’t killed him instantly.

Shim Hyeong-do had made the decision to save his comrade—someone he’d trained with since academy days.

Drawn by gunshots and the scent of blood, zombies swarmed.

Then, as if cursed, a thunderous noise surged through the air, all comms went dead, and even the flares malfunctioned.

Stumbling upon this government bunker had been a stroke of pure luck.

“A guy from the Presidential Office once trained us hunters. He told us—if we ever found nameplates in Seoul, we had to check them. Said it could save our lives.”

The bunker smelled faintly of rot.

The ventilation system must’ve run until recently, since the stench was still tolerable.

“What is this? The government built stuff ?”

While we were tending to the wounded, Kim Daram explained the background of this place.

“It’s from Operation Mirage.”

“Operation... Mirage?”

“No official name, but everyone involved called it that.”

The president’s survival had been a hot topic throughout the war.

No one ever found out what happened to him.

When Incheon fell, his memory faded from public thought.

He was probably dead.

Though the Jeju government once aired a deepfake video of him in Incheon, no one on Jeju actually knew his whereabouts.

There were plenty of stories on PaleNet.

Some were fascinating, others absurd—but they all shared one detail:

The president was deeply paranoid.

Even before his presidency, he was accused by rivals of being a Chinese spy—maybe it was true.

Right before the war, he trusted no one—not his aides, not the head of security, not even allied nations.

From that paranoia, Operation Mirage was born.

Its foundation lay in a war simulation.

The model predicted that three months after war broke out, both countries would nuke each other into a stalemate.

It was an almost perfect scenario—except that it didn’t account for China collapsing too quickly for diplomacy.

Still, the president prepared for those three terrifying months.

He believed the Yongsan bunker was too obvious and unsafe.

Evacuating to Jeju didn’t appeal to him either.

He believed spies were everywhere.

He probably had recurring nightmares of his private jet being shot down by Chinese, American, or even Korean missiles.

He even refused help from U.S. aircraft carriers.

In the end, the president chose to stay hidden in Seoul—his birthplace and comfort zone.

Three months. That was the promise.

A short, yet endless time.

Thus, Operation Mirage began.

Secret bunkers «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» were built across the city.

Their locations were deliberately fragmented so no one person knew more than a piece of the puzzle.

He only told his chief of staff that the bunkers were marked with nameplates—each bearing the name of a Joseon dynasty king.

That detail alone said everything about the project’s character.

And this bunker was one of them.

“Maybe this one was the president’s,” Cheon Young-jae said suddenly.

“Who knows,” I replied.

I checked on the wounded.

In the past, we would’ve left him behind. I would’ve ordered it, even if I were the one bleeding out.

That was how we were trained at school.

But times had changed.

People had become too rare to waste.

And frontlines were now filled with those who held different beliefs.

The stretcher Shim Hyeong-do and his team assembled felt like a symbol of this new era.

A bitter but warm shift.

I finally opened my mouth.

“...That’s probably not the most important thing.”

What mattered was the intel.

We now had a vital fragment of information about the mysterious being called Screamer.

When the sound surged, all the radios caught a strange signal—an unrecognizable screech—and then burned out entirely.

It seemed to resonate with the devices themselves, overloading them beyond repair.

That part we already knew.

But Lee Haru had been carrying NP gear—the Necropolis Receiver Unit.

And it was completely untouched.

Same construction as the radios, but it had handled far more signal traffic.

Yet it was unaffected by the Screamer’s wail.

Clearly, the frequencies used in Necropolis—the voice of the dead—carried unknown powers we still didn’t understand.

Figuring out how would be our next task.

“How long will it take?” I asked Shim Hyeong-do.

“The vehicle’s been under attack for a while. Make it ten,” I ordered.

Cheon Young-jae signaled me.

A dried-up corpse lay there.

The skull was gone, and the upper body crushed—likely from a powerful blast to the head.

“Looks like he put a grenade in his mouth and pulled the pin,” Kim Daram muttered.

Cheon Young-jae began searching the body.

The thing was shriveled, half-decayed, but the stench and stickiness remained. Yet Cheon Young-jae combed through it without hesitation—even between its legs.

He gasped while checking the back of the pants.

He’d found something.

I leaned in to look at the notebook with him.

Half the notebook was ruined by rot and body fluids, but we could still make out a few fragments.

Even if the rest were intact, no one else could have interpreted them.

Clearly, it was written for the owner’s eyes only.

No identifying clues, unfortunately.

Cheon Young-jae tried peeling off the last page, but it was stuck with dried fluids—so he even used saliva to loosen it.

“You’ve got a strong stomach,” Kim Daram commented.

“Commander,” someone called out.

Ten minutes had passed.

The wounded was now secured on the stretcher.

I nodded and gave the order to activate the radio.

It immediately picked up a signal, and I radioed the vehicle.

“This is Sierra One. Sierra One. We’ve secured the missing personnel. Returning now, over—”

Before I could finish, something hit.

I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t hear it. But my brain felt it.

A bizarre, inexplicable tension gripped my spine like a sixth sense warning me of doom.

A horrific screech echoed from afar.

The activated radio received the foreign signal and spewed it out at us.

Clicks, hums, whines, hisses—randomized sounds layered into a grotesque symphony.

And yet, somehow, they had direction. Structure. An intent.

Why that chaotic noise felt so painfully coherent, I couldn’t explain.

But it wasn’t just me.

I saw it in Kim Daram’s stare. In the dread in Cheon Young-jae’s eyes.

The radio smoked and fizzled out.

A sinister silence fell over us.

The monster’s incomprehensible power had overwhelmed everyone.

No exceptions. Not school-trained, not academy-trained, not rookies, not veterans.

We had all been reminded of what kind of enemy we were facing.

And with infinity comes the truth: it cannot be overcome.

Terror spread across every face.

I wasn’t immune either.

But at least I knew what I had to do.

“This is why I ordered the radios to stay sealed.”

“It sees radio waves. Like we see light.”

Shift away from despair.

“NP equipment. Status?”

One by one, clarity returned to their eyes.

A faint smile curved Kim Daram’s lips.

She gave me a subtle thumbs-up, just out of view.

I chuckled and looked at the team.

Still unfamiliar in my grip—but I’d use it soon enough.

“Ahn Seung-hwan. Lee Haru. On me.”

Zombies waited beyond the door.

Hundreds of them in this confined space.

Maybe even the sniper who wounded us lurked, waiting for another shot.

But I wouldn’t hesitate.

I kicked open the door, ascended the stairs, and rushed into the horde.

This was my daily life.

Inside the bunker—or out.

Inside the armored vehicle.

Cheon Young-jae finally peeled off the last page of the notebook.

Ruined by fluids, most of it was unreadable—but one line stood out:

– Tomorrow, I’m meeting Kang Han-min.

That was the final record left by the dead.

“What? Kang Han-min?!”

“Why would his name show up?”

The single name shifted the mood inside the vehicle.

“What does that mean? He went to see Kang Han-min?”

“Who could it be? Only the President would get a private meeting with him.”

“Did Kang Han-min even come back to Seoul? There’s been no news of that.”

“What about Senior Kim? Wasn’t he once on the Gukwiwon board?”

“I was just a nobody. No real authority. But yeah... weird that of all the cryptic initials, this one’s a full name. Whoever wrote it clearly treated him differently.”

I kept my mouth shut and looked out the window.

A single thought surfaced—maybe close to the truth.

Not that it mattered.

Outside, the horde rushed toward us.

Just like we were, before the war.